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My grief had led to my fall.
I can say this as I have known, watched, and observed my father.
Young as I was, I was not naive enough to even try to delusion myself into thinking that my father was actually dealing with my mother's passing.
I am assured that had my father not met Violan, he would have been a doomed man.
Undermine a situation. Drink it off. Cry in silence when it gets too much. Continue on with life. Ignore the emotional toll and pretend it doesn't even exist.
A process, a cycle. Of a never ending monotone life you aren't even there alive for. Aren't even surviving in.
Just blurring the lines of reality, drinking more when the sharp, dizzying pain eventually comes, sleeping only when you pass out.
I had watched my father's descent into debauchery, a terrible attempt at forgetting the grief following him like a cape.
Ron had been responsible for taking care of me, but only until a certain point. He might have made me sweet tea when I requested, but it was beyond his responsibility to stop me from watching my own father.
So I observed. I witnessed our vassals' desperate attempts at maintaining the Henituse name despite their lord's descent. I watched the greedy relatives laying their hands on whatever money and power that they could grab with the count's loosened hold on the territory.
And as I witnessed my father's fall,
I also saw the moment he fell in love once again.
It was like something straight out of a fairy tale.
A man grieving for his dead wife meets a beautiful woman with strong beliefs and patience flowing through her being.
They meet, converse, and eventually, they fall in love.
She is there to comfort him. There to support him. She is a strong and just woman.
…She is someone that deserves the title of countess.
***
It is not a good day.
***
I feel resentment welling up my heart.
Of festering grievances I've been so willing to ignore all these years.
Anger at my foolish father's willful ignorance, hate towards my greedy relatives who see me as nothing but a chance at power. Disappointment at my step-mother's caution towards whatever relationship we could have had.
It squeezes my fastly beating heart, boils under my skin, and stings tears in my drunken eyes.
A multitude of emotions and realizations leak out of my heart and into my soul so quickly, yet not fast enough that I couldn't stop it. But I didn't make a move to control myself. I wanted this. I wanted to do this so badly, and I am just now realizing this.
I throw the bottle.
It hits the countess straight at her head.
It shatters, and then there is panic.
There is blood red, much like the color of my hair, mixed in the brown locks the Henituse are known for.
The servants are screaming Violan’s title, and the guards come rushing in, but they only stand, uncertain. They don’t act, as I may have attacked the countess of this estate, but I am also the young master, and still my father’s rightful heir, for reasons that no one but the man himself can explain.
Everything is at a standstill, the countess staring at me in shock and what might be hurt or betrayal, but I cannot tell. I am supposed to be drunk and angry, with a terrible aim, my throw hitting her on the head only by sheer coincidence.
I am not drunk, but no one needs to know that. But what I am, though, is angry.
So I muster up the resentment bubbling under my skin and shout in staged anger, disturbing the tense moment of stillness.
“THE FUCK WERE ‘YA DOIN’ IN MY WAY?! HAH?!”
It was then that my father arrived, panting after having obviously run here after hearing about the commotion.
***
I've processed everything so badly.
So many things.
Ron' s indifference. My father's neglect and depression. My step-mother's fear.
It feels so bare, laid out like this.
Written down to simple words, short and so full of meaning.
Indifference. Neglect and Depression. Fear
I had always undermined what I saw, consciously or not.
Professionalism. Busy. Gloom. Strictness.
I have been invalidating my own feelings by undermining the situation.
Perhaps that's why I've become the trash that I am today. And maybe that's why I hit her.
No, I'm sure that this is one of the main roots of my thought process, leading me to become the way that I am now.
I truly am just like my father.
Too grief-stricken to focus on the present. Trying my best to forget about the past by blurring out the present with the satisfying bitter taste of alcohol.
Realizing that I've gone too far, far too late, and trying to fix things by distancing myself.
No matter the consequences.
And one day, Cale Henituse does not wake up.
Instead, a man from another world falls asleep after reading a novel during his day off, only to find himself waking up in the body of a minor villain character of the very same novel that he was reading.
He discovers that all the information he had read from the novel is useless as, as soon as he is dressed, he is summoned to the count’s office and promptly disowned.
The man who occupies the body of a former Henituse, with blood red hair and tired reddish-brown eyes throws away any and all plans that he had started making when he woke up in this world.
He lives a monotone life as a popular dancer in the slums, though he himself is unaware of said popularity.
His relationship with the count’s family is nothing but a distant echo of a past that is not his.
As Cale's distance with them is maintained, the hopes made out of grief by a young man is achieved.